


Sowing Season

by orphan_account



Series: Shuffle [8]
Category: Professional Wrestling
Genre: Kind of kayfabe compliant, Kind of real life compliant, M/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3358703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean was just the soil for Seth to sow his emotional seeds; seeds of love, seeds of hate, confusion, terror, understanding, camaraderie. He grew all the things that Seth lacked, and allowed him to pluck them out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Based around the Brand New song of the same title. Read, review, recommend :)

It had been a long night, if the half-eaten pizza crusts, the emptied beer bottles, and shattered glass could tell anything. Sheets were ripped from the bed, not from passionate lovemaking, but rather in an attempt to cocoon a man whose entire being could only be described as “eggshell fine,” that level of completion that looks much sturdier than it truly is; one wrong move and everything could crumble to dust. The clock on Dean’s phone gleamed 6:27 AM at him, straining his sleep-deprived eyes as he glared at it, resigning himself to the fact that he’s going to get shit for sleep. Nothing substantial, not with how worried he was about the man curled up against him on the couch, clinging to the thin hotel sheets like they were armor. 

Dean had left the arena after his match was done, doing his level best to avoid any sort of contact, wanting a quiet night to himself where he could just relax, eat some crappy food, have some sub-par alcohol, and sprawl out on a bed. However, at around 12:45 AM, a slow knock on his door called his attention away from the terrible porn he had found on the television. He shut it off without even a second thought, padding over to the door.

“What in the hell do you want…” was all he had managed to get out before he saw Seth standing there, hunched over, eyes red rimmed, and the streaks of tears along his cheek.

“Shit… alright, come in, fuck…” 

Dean hadn’t asked Seth what the cause of this breakdown was, namely because Seth didn’t have the energy in him to speak, not fully, not in a way that Dean could comprehend. He had collapsed in Dean’s arms, crying to the point of shuddering hyperventilation, the only words in his lexicon being apologies and needing a drink. This was a mental breakdown in its critical moments, and Dean knew, from his own experience, what worked to calm them down.

He had given him a bottle of water, and a slice of pizza, and watched as he huddled into the corner of the couch, nibbling on an edge of crust before he could wheeze out that he wanted a beer, that he wanted to break something, that he just wanted to give up, that he was sorry. He was garbage, he was the worst of the worst, he was surprised anyone still loved him or cared about him, that he didn’t deserve anything good in his life. Each word was hiccupped, repetitious, and finally Dean found himself ducking as Seth grabbed the nearest thing him and chucked it at the decorative mirror on the opposite wall, flinching at the sound of shattering glass. 

It was then that Dean rushed him, grabbing anything and everything he could to place them outside of Seth’s reach, and instead grabbing the blankets from the bed, tugging sheets in his hastiness, and promptly wrapped them, along with his arms, tightly around Seth, shushing him into silence, his only response a wheezing mantra of “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, oh god…” 

Here he was, nearing six hours later, idly rubbing his hand up and down Seth’s back, his breathing evened out by the overwhelming exhaustion that comes with pouring out twenty-odd years of frustration and fears and irritation. Seth had just started blabbering it out, Dean honestly didn’t want to know, but he felt that if Seth needed it aired out, who was he to argue. Maybe it would make him feel better.

Instead, he was witness to Seth spiraling further, discussing his parents and their unhappiness with his career choice, not knowing his biological father, the problems he had with friendships and relationships and how some of those lines blurred in uncomfortable and inconvenient ways, of constantly fighting against something that ate at his nerves, that he never felt strong enough to truly battle it. How he wanted to make things better, wanted to mend things, but instead only makes them worse, and -, and -, and-... 

Dean had only sighed, letting Seth burrow in against him. Why was he even doing this? They weren’t friends, they weren’t lovers, and they sure as hell weren’t brothers, and yet Dean had opened the door for Seth, allowing him in for comfort. Maybe he was just a sucker. Maybe he still had a spot carved out - rotten out, hollowed out - for Seth to squirm his way into, irritating the healing edges and bringing him all that much more pain when he would leave again. 

His phone flashed 7:02AM and while he didn’t have travel plans for the day, he did want to go for a walk, or something, to clear his brain. Scooping up Seth’s sleeping form, he carried him over to the bed, gently placing him down before taking a moment to look at him, truly watching him. His face was still puffy from the drinking and the crying, his hair in shambles, curled up so tightly into the fetal position that Dean didn’t think he’d ever get the blankets back. 

He took the momentary reprieve from cuddle duty to check his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. The exhaustion had taken hold of him, if his pale-and-splotchy complexion had anything to say about it. His eyes were squinting, the bags dark and heavy beneath his eyes. He felt like he’d been run over by a truck, and as much as he needed the mental space of a walk, what he needed more was sleep. 

The walk towards the bed felt like the Green Mile; foreboding, the path to his demise. Surely he could sleep in the same bed and not feel this constriction around his throat and his guts, this tension of “what the fuck are you doing” in his muscles. At the dip in the mattress, a sleep-heavy murmur crept out of the heap of blankets and sheets that was Seth Rollins. 

“...Dean?” 

“Shush, yeah, it’s me, go back to sleep.”

“C’mere.” 

An arm snaked its way out of the blankets, a tired hand grasping weakly at open air.

“What. Go to bed.” 

Seth poked his head out of the sheets, his doe eyes hazy with fatigue, half aware of his words. “Just stay here.” 

“I’m not going anywhere, you idiot, go back to sleep.”

“I know. You never go anywhere. You never leave. That’s what I do.”

Dean felt his eyes close tightly in aggravation. “Seth, we’re not doing this again, I don’t think you have enough water in your system to cry again, _please_ , go the fuck back to sleep.” 

“Dean… please… You can pretend to hate me outside the door, in real life, but for now? Just… Right now I need…” Seth ended with a hum, a sound of confusion or realization or nervousness. What _did_ Seth need? What did Seth _consider_ him? 

“We’re not like that anymore. You don’t just get to ask me for that.” 

“I’m not. Not for that. Just. I need… this. I need this.” Seth stuck his other arm out of the blanket, holding his arms open as if he were a small child asking to be held. 

He was asking to be held.

Dean wanted to dump him unceremoniously outside the hotel room, but instead found himself shrugging in defeat, his limbs too tired to do anything except rest against the comfort of the mattress. With a lazily lifted arm, he let Seth nuzzle his way into close contact, his face resting against his neck, his hand back to trailing lazy spirals along the column of Seth’s spine. It felt weird, and foreign, and so overwhelmingly correct, he wanted to vomit.

Here was a man he wanted to rip limb from limb, to send to the depths of Hell itself, and instead he was nurturing him like an injured baby animal. Someone who had ripped his heart to shreds, and yet here they were, limbs entwined in a hotel bed in the early dredges of the morning, breathing heavy like more than just simple snuggling was going on. Dean wanted to press the lips he had bruised and the tongue he had bitten against every centimeter of Seth’s skin, to leave bruises of love over bruises of hatred. 

Instead, he was just the soil for Seth to sow his emotional seeds; seeds of love, seeds of hate, confusion, terror, understanding, camaraderie. He grew all the things that Seth lacked, and allowed him to pluck them out of him like crops for harvest. 

“You can hate me later, when the door is open. But for now, please.” 

Dean only nodded, pulling the blankets from Seth’s body to instead cover the both of them, his palms smoothing over goosepimpled skin, warming it under his touch, before letting the steady breathing of Seth’s guide him into sleep.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Bluh ok I'm alive and writing again, I'm sorry guys! Real life and illness and Wrestlemania got in the way. But, I'm back! With a second chapter to this, and I'm unsure of where this story is going, so it's marked as complete until I figure out if I'm writing another chapter for it or not. This may or may not become another Anchor situation, who knows. This chapter is based off the song "Sleeping With Ghosts" by Placebo, and you should definitely give that one a listen if you want to understand the mood I've set up for this bit. Thank you all for your amazing patience and encouragement. Love you all.

It was moments like this that Dean was glad for being able to use the corporate jet. The flight was going to be terribly long, and even though a week had passed since Seth's midnight mental breakdown, Dean had still kept an eye on him from afar, keeping up the veneer of kayfabe when in public. In the relative privacy of the plane, Dean could reach out and grab Seth's hand, rubbing a thumb over the roughened knuckles before sliding palm against palm, feeling the cracked and torn skin against his, fingers interlaced tight enough to keep Seth together.

He looked over to Seth, whose ears were covered by headphones, jammed on top of some oversized beanie, head turned to stare intently out of the window. He had been insisting that he was ok for the week following the panic attack, but Dean could read him better than anyone in the company. They'd been attached at the hip since FCW, finding in each other the only other person who could understand them. They could fight to the death in the ring and still come up with a stalemate. They could nearly complete each other's sentences. Everyone who knew them could see it from miles away; they just clicked.

"Strange electricity."

"Best friends."

"Wrestling soulmates."

He squeezed his fingers slightly, hoping to drag Seth's vision away from the window for just a moment. When Seth turned his head, the fatigue evident on his face, eyes sunken, the bags darkened by sleepless nights with long workout sessions peppered throughout, Dean wanted to do nothing more than just hold him, like he had a week prior, to allow him to just sleep.

Sometimes love means allowing them to rest.

Dean quirked a smile at Seth, hoping it would encourage something other than the morose look on his face, and for a moment, the quick eye roll was enough to make Dean think that he had done at least one good thing for him that day. However, when he was given nothing but a head turn back towards the window, Dean sighed, fidgeting his hand away from Seth's grasp, choosing instead to grab his phone, typing away at a brief text, saving it as a draft, before tapping at Seth's shoulder.

Once more Seth turned, and Dean held up the phone, hoping that Seth could read the message.

_Meet me in the room later._

Seth nodded, the edges of his mouth turning slightly upwards, his eyes still large and sad. Dean wanted to pull him onto his lap and just hold him again. They were the worst kept secret, and yet everyone kept mum for the sake of Seth, who tried his best to ignore his emotions, for better or for worse.

Dean closed his eyes, smiling when he felt Seth's hand link back together with his.

* * *

After hours of press, of errands ran and tensions sweat out in gyms, it was with tentative hands that they found each other in the dark of the hotel room. It was only sunset, the room wasn't truly darkened enough to hide each other, but they felt that if any lights were turned on, they'd have to come to grips with how they fell into the routine of finding comfort in the cracks in their skin, at finding themselves in the reflection of each others' eyes. A soulmate is a heavy burden to bear.

And yet this is where they found themselves as always, tripping over each other's hesitations as they stumbled towards the bed, each lie they told themselves discarded with another article of clothing. What changed this time was that Seth was shaking, and Dean knew it wasn't from a chill in the room.

"Hush, hey, no. Is it too much?"

"It's not enough."

A silent nod, the understanding sending sparks between their skin that only they could translate.

"Did you…?"

"Yeah, in the hoodie pocket."

"Alright… yeah, shit, ok."

The sudden weakness to Dean's knees, his intestines twisting as if this were the first time at all -  _wasn't it though? They weren't the same person they were when they first did this, so much had changed, and yet a remodeled home is still home, even if the wallpaper's different and the carpet is clean_  - made it harder for him to stumble over towards where Seth's clothes had crumpled themselves together, rifling through pockets until he found the tiny travel packet that felt so much heavier in the palm of his hand.

They were going back there. They were heading down this tumultuous spiral again, and as Dean thought up a prayer to every god he could quickly recall a name for, he found his legs working without thinking, heading back towards the bed, where Seth sat up, shoulders tense with wondering just how quickly would he find himself falling again. Belatedly, he found that he'd already collapsed at the bottom of that pit again, when Dean crawled behind him, and rolled him onto his side, laying a kiss at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, an elbow propping him up as he realized how oddly intimate this was about to become.

The rest of the moment was in hushed tones, almost reverent in how fragile this was for the both of them. Once Dean had figured out how to get the packet open, and Seth had flinched at the almost-forgotten feeling of cold wetness, all that was heard was whispered words of encouragement, and the hitch in Seth's breath as each finger, long and knobbly, worked their way inside. It was, probably, the longest time focused on foreplay that either of them had given for each other, but this was like their first time all over again, an echo of who they used to be, and when Seth finally whined out that it was enough, and Dean had slicked himself up enough to start the slow, agonizing process of working himself inside, centimeter by centimeter, Seth couldn't help the prickle of tears at his eyes.

It wasn't even the angle making his everything in his body grow warm and at the edge of mind-numbing release, or the gentle rocking motions that made his heart twinge with each slow thrust. It was Dean's arm wrapped around his middle, the peppered kisses at his neck, across his shoulders, the murmured words against his hair that was wrecking him, each tiny push of his hips back, falling into the rhythm, that broke his heart all over again.

He didn't know how much time had passed, or when Dean's hand had curled around his length, slow even strokes bringing him closer to that teetering edge, but he knew that when he finally let go, coming with a keen locked in his throat, the followed bite at his shoulder as Dean came was answered only by tears.

Realistically, they both knew that they needed to get up, to clean up, to diverge paths once more, but who would know? This week they were far away from prying eyes, and if this brief moment of comfort could be the last that Seth could hold onto some semblance of stability in his life before he walked gladly back into the shitstorm, perhaps he could hold onto this moment just a few seconds more.

With his hand locked firmly in Dean's, whose arm had wrapped back around him, he could feel tears at the back of his neck, and he ignored the nausea in his system at the fact that he'd ripped this out of Dean again, like he always did. For now, he pretended that they were back in Tampa, at some shitty apartment building, before the world had made them into separate beings, into metamorphosed creatures so different from who they were when they met that sometimes it felt like they were looking at strangers.

For now, as he felt Dean lay a gentle, nervous kiss at the back of his neck, Seth felt as if he were sleeping with a ghost.


End file.
